


The Silence Before

by daisydiversions



Category: Kyou Kara Maou!
Genre: Battle of Arnold, Gen, M/M, boy touching, fic on demand, inappropriate use of knitting needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-17
Updated: 2008-03-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 02:37:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisydiversions/pseuds/daisydiversions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Battle of Arnold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silence Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deadharbor](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=deadharbor).



"Hmmmm…" Yozak murmured. 

The sun was warm and the sky clear, and Yozak could almost lay back and close his eye, pretend like the enemy wasn't almost upon them. Like they hadn't been sentenced to almost certain, overwhelming death by their own government. 

The steady, even sound of Conrad tending to his sword was soothing and Yozak's bare toes curled in the grass. Yards away their comrades were writing their last letter home to their wives, cursing their ancestors, giving up. 

He could almost forget.

"What is it?" Conrad asked, the same darkness coloring his voice that he'd carried since the wedding, and Yozak idly hated both him and Julia for being so insufferably agreeable and contrary to their own causes.

He supposed he couldn't really talk. 

"Still trying to figure out what the hell you're doing here," Yozak told him. "Aren't you a prince of something?"

Conrad gave a one shouldered shrug, eyes still focused on his task. "Royalty isn't exactly a stable status in our country. Shinou is the only one who decides who is important and who is not."

Yozaku crossed his hands behind his head and stared straight up into the sun, letting the bright dots bleach his vision. "But your own brother signed your assignment papers. That's so cold~! He couldn't have hated your father that much."

Conrad chose not to comment on this and Yozak was almost disappointed but not surprised.

"I wonder how Gwendal is doing these days," Yozak ventured. It was boring, waiting to be slaughtered, and he'd much rather provoke Conrad about his family than think about his own. "Sipping tea and looking constipated. Or maybe he's finally taken a cue from his mother and started bending pretty, young nobles over that great big desk of his. I've seen the way he looks at Gunter sometimes, like he's thinking of really creative ways to get him to shut the hell up about the history or this and the custom of that."

The grinding stopped and Yozak tried not to let the triumphant thrill show in his face or voice. He kept his gaze upward, his vision now a screaming bright filter of the world, no contrast, no distinction; he thought maybe the world of the dead would not be much different than this one still moment-- stretched out into forever. It wasn't a bad thought.

When the scraping began again it was rougher, more deliberately forced, as though Conrad was trying to will his mazok into being, but Yozak felt no danger. Conrad had an unexpectedly weak will when it came to anything he truly wanted. It was one of his more attractive qualities.

And he needed the distraction as much as Yozak did.

"It would be fun to sort him out though. Show him what those knitting needles can really do."

"So, I'm to sit back and enable you in seducing my very respectable and unwilling elder brother?" There might have been a lilt of amusement in Conrad's voice, but Yozak might have imagined it.

Yozak stretched out his leg and brushed the length upwards from Conrad's boot to his shin. "You're not exactly doing anything about keeping me otherwise occupied. You know it's too late to offer your purity to Shinou in exchange for your life. I've already taken it several times over." 

"Hn." Conrad paused before sheathing his sword and leaning forward, elbows on knees, and looked at him. Quirking an eyebrow, Yozak lifted himself onto his own elbows and looked back. 

"Yozak, I'm going to make it."

"Okay," Yozak allowed with a smirk. Conrad should have saved his heartfelt missives for the troops. 

"No," Conrad said seriously. "We're going to do this, Yozak. And we'll both return alive."

Yozak held the eye contact another minute, sight struggling to refocus, and tried not to be unbelievably, irrationally confident in Conrad's determination. He thought about Conrad's throat under his lips and Conrad's hands pulling apart his uniform after this was all over, armies dead at their feet, and almost laughed at how ridiculous it seemed.

And yet, as Conrad sheathed his sword and started to work on Yozak's, pausing to graze the tips of Yozak's bare ankle with his fingers, Yozak believed completely and utterly that it would come to pass. Or he'd die trying.


End file.
